


unquestioned

by pipistrelle



Series: mostly void, partially stars [1]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: M/M, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 00:44:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/893813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipistrelle/pseuds/pipistrelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Some things are just aren't meant to be questioned. Most things, actually." - Cecil, Episode 23. </p><p>Carlos discovers that when Cecil is involved, breakfast is a mystery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	unquestioned

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a tumblr prompt for "first time", which I chose to interpret as "first time having breakfast together as boyfriends" because I can. All characters property of Commonplace Books, etc.

The most unsettling thing about Night Vale, Carlos thinks, is not just that it’s full of things he doesn’t understand. That’s not a particularly frightening condition for a scientist — not a scientist with a sturdy stomach, anyway.

No, the most unsettling thing about Night Vale is how it transforms all that Carlos used to understand, warping the familiar into unutterable, catastrophic confusion; things like dog parks, and the passage of time, and, now, breakfast.

Carlos feels sure that he used to understand breakfast. But now, this breakfast, with Cecil sitting at his table in the kitchen/lab wearing only a faded t-shirt from Carlos’ closet and boxers with little pink scythes on them, this breakfast with Cecil sipping coffee from one of Carlos’ beakers in a way that blatantly emphasizes the bite marks on his collarbone, with Cecil humming something dreadful and looking so radiantly happy — this breakfast is a mystery.

"Good morning!" Cecil says, and his smooth, sonorous voice makes Carlos shiver.

"Hi," Carlos says, but before he can follow it up with something else idiotic, Cecil pushes a plate of eggs and a beaker of coffee towards him. Carlos sits and reaches for a fork, then stops when Cecil lifts a heavy black briefcase onto the table.

"You know, I was afraid it was a little forward of me, bringing this over," he says. “I was afraid that you wouldn’t — oh, but then you did, you perfect man…"

"What’s in it?" Carlos asks quickly, before Cecil can drift off into a rapturous, embarrassing swoon.

Cecil clicks the clasps and lifts a heavy stack of forms out of the case. The sheets of paper are black, and at first Carlos thinks they’re blank, until Cecil pulls a collapsible blacklight lamp out of the case and shines it onto the top sheet. “A bit of a drag, I know," Cecil says. “But I like to think of it as a relationship-building exercise. Isn’t it nice to think that the City Council mandates Post-Coital Reports as a way to bring us closer together?"

"Uh," Carlos says, “um," but Cecil has already deftly split the stack and deposited half of them in front of him, along with a pen.

"Oh, don’t worry about the report you’ll be getting from me," Cecil says, and winks.

Breakfast with Cecil is still a mystery; but after a year and a half in Night Vale, intimate, bizarre interrogation is something Carlos has come to know very well indeed. The silence is broken only by the scratch of their pens and, a little later, Cecil’s horribly enthusiastic humming.

When they’ve finished the forms, there’s a tapping at the window that turns out to be a three-eyed raven. It flies in and lands atop the pile of forms, which Cecil has laid back in the briefcase. Raven, forms, and case vanish in a puff of smoke, leaving behind the faint smell of sagebrush and a single black feather.

Cecil goes back to eating his breakfast, occasionally fluttering his eyelashes at Carlos.

Carlos sits thinking for a while, sipping his coffee. When he finally puts the beaker to his lips and discovers that it’s empty, he reaches out and pinches the feather between two fingers. It feels real.

Cecil’s hand is resting on the table. Carlos covers it with his free hand. “I think I need to run some tests on this," Carlos says, twirling the feather. “Want to help?"

Cecil’s face lights up, so radiantly that Carlos would need to invent a new unit of luminance to describe it. “Absolutely of course," he says.

"I’ll teach you to use the spectrograph," Carlos says, unable to keep a smile off his face.

They leave the dishes in the sink and spend the next several hours making a beautiful chaos out of Carlos’ delicate instruments. Eventually, he comes to the conclusion that maybe he can come to understand having breakfast with Cecil.

  
He just needs more practice, that’s all.


End file.
